We are very happy to announce that the .x-med-a. publication is now online, free for download, sharing, printing, but most of all, for your browsing, reading and viewing pleasure. [viewing tip: ‘facing pages’ or ‘book view’ in your pdf viewer].

In its pages you can find more than 40 contributions from a motley crew of artists, designers and engineers, including Matthew Fuller, Joey Berzowska, Casey Reas, Akihiro Kubota along with many other clever and lovely people. The articles, interviews, poems and patches reflect upon education and play, poetics and aesthetics, technology and collaboration, politics and economics of experimental media arts, steeped in a sea of photographs, diagrams, screenshots and illustrations. For those of you who favor paper over pixels, there is a printed edition (with fewer articles) available. Contact us at info [at] xmedk [dot] be for details.

The review originated from a series of technically and artistically diverse workshops, organised by four independent technological arts initiatives in Brussels: FoAM, nadine, okno and iMAL. The workshops responded to the needfor a place where continuous learning and dialogue between peers is encouraged, with the objective of sharing of experience, skills and knowledge among diverse groups interested in emerging ideas, media and technologies.

February 11, 2013 / admin / Comments Off on How to make a flat variable resistor with some wood, plastic, tape and coppertape

ther photograph of the same construction – with the thumb of my cooperating assistant P

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Here on the left you see the double sided sticky tape, stuck to the transparant film.
Measure the lenght of your video tape, and make it a bit longer than your long piece of copper tape, joining the two little pieces of copper tape.

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Stick the video tape on the transparant plastic film full of double sided sticky tape. Very important: make sure that the conductive side of the video tape is orientated towards the copper band, when all is glued together. (The white bits left on the plastic films are just the pieces of paper of the double sided sticky tape.)

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We measure! The length of the video tape will determine the resistance of your resistor. Now we stick it all together, the video tape covers the copper tape, but they should not touch without a little pressure…

We know using this technology involves taking some big risks, and that’s okay. We have practice for that when we play real money slots.

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We have glued it all together and we measure again!

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Now two measurements with some finger pressure (the place where your finger pushes on the tape determins the length of the cunductivity, hence the resistance!)

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Yeay it works
For the usability of the resistor, we soldered on three little pieces of wire on the copper tape. Solder very quickly, because the copper tape is hyperconductive and all could melt..

In case of unclarity – questions can be asked
This self made resistor was developed by Johannes Taelman.

During the second workshop within the framework of Code31’s xmedk online research,
we’ll present a two day crash course in audio and video streaming.
What does it take to send a live video stream from your desktop to the whole world:

We’ll learn how to configure a streaming server, take a look at different kinds of broadcasters.
Deal with the technicalities: Which protocols to use? What is the difference between udp en tcp?
What is with all these codecs?

We’ll start low level but in a further stage, dive deeper into the technicalities of streaming :
How to configure your network and deal with protocols.
How your video imagery gets compressed to those coded bits and bytes.

The people at rambla.be are giving us an introduction in getting your streams out in the open,
reliably streaming to the bigger public.

:: partcipants ::

The workshop is free and open for anyone.
If you’re interested in participating, send an email with short bio
and motivation to ef4db at code31.lahaag.org

:: non-physical ::

This workshop is a testcase for the Code31 online research, so
those who can’t make it to the workshop can follow online, details
will be provided on the code31 site;

We will provide a live video stream and a moderated chat channel.

We’re looking for participants who want to join and also evaluate
the setup ! So, if you’re interested, point your fingers to
ef4db@code31.lahaag.org

:: about Arjen Keesmaat ::

Arjen is an interaction designer and media artist, graduated at the Utrecht School of Arts (The Netherlands),
faculty of Art, Media and Technology, now active developing media-installations, from in concept to realisation.

Former collaborator at waag.org in the Sensing Presence – (KeyWorx, Connected/Anatomic) and the Creative
Learning (ScratchWorx) departments, conducting workshops, technical realisation and development.

Code31 has investigated a number of available open source tools.
These can be combined according to your needs, depending on the topic of your workshop.
We give a small evaluation and some links in the kid nodes on the right.
We have noticed in our research that the right choice of available tools, how and when to use them is the most important matter of giving online workshops.
Where applicable, we have noted which tool is most appropriate for what goal.

It’s amazing the number of things you can do with your phone today. You can read the x-med-a publication or play casino games at www.pocketcasino.ca.

I signed up for the workshop because i wanted to learn more about my Arduino.

I’ve had an Arduino for a couple of months, but didnt really understand what I could do with it. And now I know! Thanks to Johannes and the Todbot’s spooky projects. Finally I know why i need to use an extra resistor when i try to measure with a photosensor/thermistor, and that a piezo can be input & output!. It was really cool to make my own ribbon-resistor!

I’ve spent most days working on electronics > arduino > electronics projects (mainly to LEDs) because I dont know PD or MAX MSP yet, and i wanted to know how the sensors worked.
So I made blinking LEDs and ones that faded, and I converted my light or heat input into quicker/slower brighter/less bright LEDS.
And I learnt how to use a Dremel.

I found the workshop very useful, and my plan is to pass on any knowledge I got during the past four days in a local workshop/work get together.

Within the framework of Code31’s xmedk online research, we present a two day crash course in realtime 3D visuals with Max-MSP-Jitter.
The particpants will start from basic platonic solids, moving up to matrix and audio controlled textured structures.
While the workshop is only two days, we aim to provide a complete set of skills which should be enough to develop yourself to a higher level.

:: partcipants ::

Participants should have a solid knowledge of Max-MSP and basic knowledge of Jitter.
Jitter knowledge can be very minimal or even non-existant for fast learners, but the participants must be eloquent in the Max language.
The workshop is completely free of charge.
If you’re interested in participating, send an email with short bio and motivation to ef4db at code31.lahaag.org
We have 8 empty seats.

:: non-physical ::

This workshop is a testcase for the Code31 online research we’ve been conducting this year.
Those who can’t make it to the workshop can follow it online, details will be provided on the code31 site and okno.be.
Code31 is trying out an experimental setup. We will provide a live video stream and a moderated chat channel.
Patches will be shared using google.docs, we will broadcast screenshots,
questions can be send over the chat channel. We’re looking for participants who want to join and also evaluate the setup.
Send us a mail if you are interested in joining this experiment.

:: about Masato Tsutsui ::

Masato Tsutsui is a Japanese visual artist who teaches Max-MSP-Jitter at the art-management company “Dance and Media Japan” .
He is a collaborator of the online magazine “Traksy” and is part of the performance group “ONZO”
www.traksy.com/ — onzo.jp/ — adsr.sub.jp/

The Luminous Green hands-on workshop has been conceived for artists and designers using electricity in their work. The tutorial will focus on the following topics: power generation, renewable power sources, low-power computing and audiovisual displays. The workshop will be lead by Slovenian artist Marko Peljhan and attended by Belgian and international artists and designers from the 1st until the 4th May 2007. The workshop will end with an Open lab, a participatory event where an interested audience can meet the participants, chew over their experiments, relax and learn, play and chat in the informal setting of the FoAM studio.

Workshop Leader: Marko Peljhan

Marko is the coordinator of ‘Project Atol’, ‘Makrolab’, as well as ‘Insular Technologies’, a high-frequency global radio network initiative. From 2005 onwards he is coordinating the design for the Arctic and Antarctic Makrolab projects in the framework of the Interpolar Transnational Art and Science Consortium I-TASC. In 2000 he received the special Medienkunst prize at the ZKM, in 2001 the Golden Nica Prix Ars Electronica together with Carsten Nicolai and in 2004 the second prize of the Unesco Digital Media Art Award.